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Microsoft's New Bing Search Engine Now Launched
Microsoft has just launched its new Bing search engine. It has arrived two days ahead of schedule though knowing Microsoft, this may well have been planned.
Whatever, it is now online at http://www.bing.com though it may not yet be accessible from all countries.
Bing is Microsoft's latest attempt to take on Google. More accurately it's Microsoft's latest attempt to get a slice of Google's huge cash flow generated by contextual ads that appear beside search results.
When you go to the Bing site the homage to Google is clear. Apart from the background graphic it has the same minimalist look and very similar links and features.
Looks are one thing but how does it perform compared to Google?
I ran ten searches in both Bing and Google. In my judgement Google was better in seven, Bing in two with the other being a dead heat.
On a second group of ten searches it was Google eight, Bing two. This is hardly impressive. However my searches were on subjects that interest me, maybe it will give better results on more general topics.
Bing does have a couple of nice features. The one I liked most was the listing of related searches in a column in the left of search results.
Notice that the search listings are annotated with site security ratings from my Firefox WOT plug-in. That's an unexpected bonus. Don't get your hopes up though as the annotations for my StumbleUpon plug-in do not show.
So what do I make of it?
I think Bing is to Google what the Zune is to the iPod: too little, too late.
Wooing Google users away is like wooing iPod users. To do this you must have a significantly superior product.
I don't think Bing is superior at all; if anything, it's inferior.
It's interesting to contrast Bing with WolframAlpha the other recent entry into the search engine stakes. Wolfram is new, innovative and outperforms Google in many of the search categories it has targeted. Bing is simply immitative; a retake on what already exists. Worse still, it is not even as good as what already exists.
The main users of Bing will be those who use whatever search engine is built into Internet Explorer. With Bing, these users will get a much better search engine than Microsoft's previous attempts.
So folks, Bing it may be, but Google it is not.
Gizmo
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Comments
Mozilla director of community development and cofounder of firefox 'has encouraged Firefox users to switch their search engine from Google to Microsoft Bing'!
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2009/12/if_you_have_nothing....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/11/dotzler_on_schmidtt/
ianjrichards,
With all do respect (my intent is not to flame), my humble opinion is that this comes across not as a review, but a rant put forth by someone who had decided upon his opinion prior to trying the product. If you intend to provide a review of the product (which I think your readers would be interested in hearing and they deserve) then I ask that you actually provide a review. Let me set forth several questions that I, personally, would like to see answered.
1) You mentioned that you ran twenty searches and that you rated the Google results better than the Bing results on fifteen of them, four of them Bing out performed Google, and for the last one it was a "dead heat."
2) What are the differnetiating factors that makes one product better than the other?
3) Give a head to head comparison.
4) Give a market analysis. Justify the "too little, too late" comment.
If you intent is to rant, that is fine with me. This is the Internet, after all. Ranting is your right and I can respect that.
I would hope that you aspire to a higher standard for yourself than just a baseless rant. If your posting above is not baseless, then show me the underlying reasons for your conclusions. Conclusions arrived upon without justification are just opinions born of prejudice. I beg of you, give me something more than that.
If you love Google, I am find with that. If you love Bing, I am fine with that too. Just tell me why.
Sincerely and respectfully,
mike
Your criteria should be met by anyone claiming to "review" computer products (or any product, for that matter). Sadly, very nearly all reviews are done with a slant toward the "reviewer's" own preconceptions and preferences. In my opinion, any small bits of your aforementioned criteria that are offered will be managed, edited, and presented in a way that will support those preferences. I enjoy the articles and posts from Gizmo, but I know that, as with all human endeavor, there is little possibility of absolute objectivity or accuracy. Thank you for trying, mike, and good luck with the answers. Bill
Thanx for the feedback. Gizmo will reply here.
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more mention of Bing's preview feature. It's actually quite smooth and useful.
I'm finding it generally more sleek and attractive than Google, albeit a minor point.
And their commercial is hypnotizing!
The way I see it all search engines have too much BS. Such as 3,456,550 results. Good greif. This is what we have now so what to do. On top of my iGoogle got Windows Live (B-ling whatever) and Google. Too busy to constantly look for better things and complain. I've learned to think a little to better refine my searches.
Gizmo - you missed the most important features of Bing. They are more visible on the 2nd click instead of the initial search results. Try searching for restaurants in a city, and once you click to the next level, it gives filters to limit by cuisine, ratings, price ranges. Same for searching for flights - it shows available fares and how you can expect the fare to change over the next 30 days. It adds context to plain vanilla searches from Google.
Apologies for the extra * in the below post!
Try searching Bing for 'Why use Bing?'... The number one search result in the UK (number two worldwide) is for a c**ck ring, oh dear :)
I think Gizmo hit it on the mark, as he generally does in my opinion. The only "disadvantage" Google brings to the comparison is their existing power and all that goes with it...i.e. the sponsored links, etc.. But purely in terms of quality and power and usability, Google has it all over Microsoft. In fact I have yet to reconcile with myself if the genius behind Google's algorithms is even human. In any case, as with most everything MS touches these days, Bing is a desperately overhyped, empty can of air.
One of the most iritating things about Google is that it always switches it's language setting to those of the country from which you are Googling.
Bing doesn't and for me that is nice!
Try using http://www.google.com/webhp as your start page. Plz let us know if this works for you.
To remove your irritation and have Google operate as you prefer, see http://onkarjoshi.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/a-simple-firefox-2-hack/ - simple and efficient
Ian
Note that this is a hack for FireFox 2, so probably won't work for other browsers (!) and seems to interfere with normal FFox updates.
I'm running 3.0.10 and it works for me
Ian
Just been trying Bing... and i must admit, so far i prefer it to google.. seems as fast without all the rubbish.. Although as an Australian i'm a bit put out that the choices i have for results are Show All or only from the United Kingdom... no doubt that will change in the near future (i would hope) but geez microsoft, thanks for making a whole continent feel inferior.. lol
Alanw: See Bing see's you,still, as a P of Mother England ,as I am one that actually IS!
I had read the initial post about the "new" search engine / site or whatever you want to call it but I forgot about it. I went there, in the beginning I felt a very strange sensation, as a deja vu..... but then I realised, there are so many ads that it reminded me of Yellow Pages.... the original.
Nothing else than ads. Surprise, not quite.
You missed Bing's most interesting feature -- when you mouse over the right end of each search result, more information from the page in question instantly pops up, as much as 25 lines of information. This provides a handy preview of the page's content.
Otherwise, results using Bing appear to be identical to results using Windows Live, which apparently no longer exists.
I will never understand why people like Google.
I live in Argentina and nearly every search I do on google (not just google.ar) comes up with sites about sites rather than actual content.
The whole scheme of relying on links for search engine rating has ruined search. Before you just had to make a content-rich page, upload it, submit it to search engines and Alta vista etc would delete the spammers leaving results that were REAL sites.
Since Google introduced the whole link business in calculating search engine ranking, search results have been taken over by either very big sites (like wikipedia) or thousands of small sites, most of which, surprise surprise are full of google ads.
Finding real information, which used to be easy, is becoming more and more difficult.
I won't even go into trying to research medicines online (I run an animal refuge and have to check on dosages, contra-indications etc. a lot) - pages of spam sites advertising medicines for illegal sale often seemingly not with the medicine I actually put into the search engine in the first place.
Google have got rich by clever marketing and partnerships with ISPs etc., and destroying the value of search doesn't matter to them a bit.
If you use Firefox, you can remove a great deal of ads and other "rubbish" from the Google results, and also add alternative search engines etc. By installing "CustomizeGoogle"
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743
It works very well, and you usually get to what you are looking for much more quickly.
More info; http://www.customizegoogle.com/
Works very well for me, and saves me a lot of time.
Regards.....
Mike Connor
Or way to get more search engines is to click on search box tab,Manage Search Engines,then get more,then add what you want,easy peasy.
Google is rapid like a hare, Bing is still a turtle!!!!!!!!!
Steve
The inline video thumbnail features in Bing are awesome. Just search for "Surfing Videos" (http://www.bing.com/search?q=surfing+videos&go=&form=QBRE)
If you like searching for photo's try out Bing's Image Search - I was impressed. The infinite scroll is amazing. If you think you've seen every photo of Princess Diana - think again...
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=princess+diana&go=&form=QBIR
You can filter results on Black & White shots, or face shots (for celebrities and personalities).
Have to give credit to Microsoft for having a go and staying in the search game - competition is a good thing.
Google "freeware", Gizmo's freeware ranks no. 13.
Bing "freeware", Gizmo's freeware ranks no. 56.
Hmmmm.... quite a distance in ranking a search result, but this is just one example. :)
Hi Gizmo,
I'm still in love your old newsletter. :)
You know, I have loved Google over the years but lately I have been feeling that they are slipping on their core offer: SEARCH. It happens way, way too often that their results are just commercial garbage: advertisements from SEO-optimizers, in other words, spam. Try, for instance, looking for a cheap room in any city in the world. The good content is buried down, down under. Way down. Often it takes a long long search to find a quality page with quality information that a normal person would actually care to read.
I never thought I'd need to look elsewhere (after seeing search engines like AltaVista, NorthernLight and others come and go), but lately I've tried---with great reluctance---Live Search from Microsoft and been surprised to see results that were often a notch closer to a "normal user's needs". Also, I've started to search on Delicious as it retrieves pages that people actuall cared to bookmark, which is a good sign.
If you know how to get to the good stuff fast, please share your search engines!!!
Thanks again for sharing your tech wisdom,
Wishing you a gorgeous day,
Lizard
If not mistaken, Live Search is now redirected to Bing.
Bing - nice pictures, but I expected it to go "pinnngg".
WolframAlpha's good idea but I had to disable the Fx extension, seeing it whirring away to to avail made me feel guilty - so many CPU cycles wasted in looking for answers that don't exist when they could be gene mapping or looking for ET. And when it does find an answer its more often wrong than right and oh so slow to show. Maybe TungstenGamma will be better.
You can use both Google and Wolfram Alpha in Firefox;
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12006
am not impressed much with Wolfram Alpha yet, results are often odd ( but perhaps that's because some of my searches are odd! :) )
Bing? Waste of time. Unless they improve it very considerably it wont go anyhwere.
Regards.....
Mike Connor
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